James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls II

James the Brother of Jesus and

the Dead Sea Scrolls II

The Damascus Code, the Tent of David,

the New Covenant, and the Blood of Christ

Robert Eisenman

Grave Distractions Publications

Nashville, Tennessee

© 2012 Robert Eisenman

“It is related that the children of Zadok the Priest, one a boy and the other a girl, were taken captive to Rome, each falling to the lot of a different officer. One officer resorted to a prostitute and gave her the boy. The other went into the store of a shopkeeper and gave him the girl in exchange for some wine (this to fulfill Joel 4:3: ‘
And they have given a boy for a harlot and sold a girl for wine
’). After awhile, the prostitute brought the boy to the shopkeeper and said to him, ‘
Since I have a boy, who is suitable for the girl you have
,
will you agree they should cohabit and whatever issues be divided between us
?’ He a
c
cepted the offer. They immediately took them and placed them in a room. The girl began to weep and the boy asked her why she was crying? She answered, ‘
Should I not weep, when the daughter of a High Priest is given in marriage to one
(
like you
),
a slave
?’ He inquired of her whose daughter she was and she replied, ‘
I am the daughter of Zadok the High Priest
.’ He then asked her where she used to live and she answered, ‘
In the upper marketplace
.’ He next inquired, ‘
What was the sign above the house
?’ and she told him. He said, ‘
Have you a brother or a sister
?’ She answered, ‘
I had a brother and there was a mole on his shoulder and whenever he came home from school, I used to uncover it and kiss it
.’ He asked, ‘
If you were to see it now
,
would you know it
?’ She answered, ‘
I would
.’ He bared his shoulder and they recognized each other. They then embraced and kissed till they expired. Then the Holy Spirit cried out, ‘
For these things I weep
’!” (Lamentations
Rabbah
1:16.46 and
Gittin
58a).

“You will deliver the Enemies of all the Countries into the hand of the Poor (the
Ebionim
) to cast down the Mighty Ones of the Peoples, to pay (them) the Reward on Evil Ones ... and to justify the Judgements of Your Truth.... You will fight against them from Heaven ... for You commanded the Hosts of Your Elect in their thousands and their Myriads, together with the Heavenly Host of all Your Holy Ones, ... to strike the Rebellious of Earth with Your awe-inspiring Judgements.... For the King of Glory is with us ... and the Angelic Host is under His command.... (They are) like clouds, moisture-laden clouds cove
r
ing the Earth – a torrent of rain shedding Judgement on all that grows.” (The War Scroll from Qumran, XI.17–XII.10 and XIX.1–2)

“‘
Of what use are graven images, whose makers formed a casting and images of Lying
...?’ The interpretation of this passage concerns all the idols of the Nations, which they create in order to serve.... These will not save them on the Day of Judgement.... ‘
But the Lord is in His Holy Temple. Be silent before Him all the World
’! Its interpretation concerns all the Nations who but serve stone and wood. But on the Day of Judgement, God will destroy all the Servants of Idols and Evil Ones off the Earth.” (1QpHab XII.10–XIII.4 on Habakkuk 2:18–19)

Christianity and Essenism

In a book aimed at demonstrating the relationship of the Dead Sea Scrolls to Early Christianity, one should perhaps begin with the proposition that there were not two Messianisms at the end of the First Century/beginning of the Second Century in Palestine – only one. Nor was there really any such thing at this time as ‘
Christianity
’
per se
, Christians having first been called ‘
Christians
’, according to Acts 11:26, in the early to mid-Fifties of the Common Era in a place called ‘
Antioch
’ in Northern Syria (a denotation we shall have cause to question below).

So why use the term ‘
Christian
’ at all? Because one must communicate and, in order to do so, one must use words howe
v
er misleading or inadequate these may be. At the outset it should be appreciated that the use of questionable or imprecise te
r
minologies of this kind often produces all the confusion surrounding these matters. The author takes the proposition that there was no such thing as ‘
Christianity
’ in the First Century in Palestine, along with the one about there being only one Messianism in Palestine or the Land of Israel in the First Century (in his view, the one found in the Dead Sea Scrolls
1
), as tr
u
isms. The two points are more or less equivalent anyhow. At the very least one entails the other, though the first-time reader might not appreciate them as such at this point.

One needs only one final proposition to complete the structure of these mutually interconnected terminologies and that is, ‘
Essenism
’ was what ‘
Christianity
’ was in First-Century Palestine, certainly before the fall of Masada in 73 CE – whatever meaning one might wish to give to the ‘
Christianity
’ we are talking about at this point. This is not to say precisely what one might mean by ‘
Essenism
’ either, only that if one is calling documents like the Dead Sea Scrolls
Essene
, then one must define Essenism – whether inclusive of Jesus or without him – by what the Scrolls themselves say it is and not by what the often te
n
dentious or inaccurate descriptions of the various commentators such as Josephus, Philo, or early Christian writers might say it is.
1

‘
Essenism
’ flourished sometime before the fall of the Temple in 70 CE, after which it seems to have become absorbed i
n
to one or more of the several movements known to early Church writers as
Ebionites
,
Elchasaites
,
Masbuthaeans
(known in Southern Iraq and in the Koran as
the
Subba
‘ or ‘
Sabaeans
’ – that is, ‘
Immersers
’ or ‘
Daily Bathers
’),
Manichaeans
, and even ‘
Christians
’ themselves. All of these are not necessarily separate or mutually exclusive terminologies. In fact, they may be de
s
ignating the same phenomenon from the standpoint or native tongue of a different observer whether writing in Greek, Ar
a
maic, Syriac, or some other language. This brings us back to our original proposition, namely that there was no such thing as ‘
Christianity
’ in Palestine in the First Century, that is, no belief in Jesus as ‘
the Christ
’
per se
, and this probably not until well into the Second Century sometime before the Bar Kochba Uprising.
2

Antioch
,
Ananias
, and
Jude the Brother of James

Though the
Antioch
in Acts (and Galatians) is generally considered to be Antioch-on-the-Orontes in Syria (the ‘
Antioch
’ that is closest to the Mediterranean), there were at least
four
Antioch
s in
Asia
at this time – the founder of the Seleucid Dynasty in Syria after Alexander the Great’s death having apparently harbored an inordinate affection for his father
Antiochus
.

These included
Antioch-in-Pisidia
, now part of Turkey, described in Acts 13:14–50. There was
Antiochia Charax
, ‘
Charax Spasini’
or present-day Basrah at the mouth of the Tigris River on the Persian Gulf. In Josephus, Charax Spasini was the place where Izates, the favorite son of Queen Helen of Adiabene, first met the itinerant merchant
cum
missionary
Ananias
, an ind
i
vidual also apparently appearing in both Eusebius and Acts. Adiabene was the area around the source of the Tigris in Nort
h
ern Iraq, roughly equivalent to modern-day Kurdistan and not very distinct from what Eusebius calls ‘
the Land of the Edessenes
’ or ‘
Osrhoeans
’ (Assyrians) ‘
beyond the Euphrates
’.
3
Finally, there was
Antioch-by-Callirhoe
or
Carrhae
on the U
p
per Euphrates in the region of Abraham’s place-of-origin
Haran
in Northern Syria – also now Southern Turkey – what Eus
e
bius will denote as ‘
the Land of the Edessenes’
, a city which eventually became known as
Edessa
. This city – famous ever after not only in the history of the Crusades, but also in ‘
Holy Shroud
’ historiography and hagiography
– is my choice, historically speaking, for the real
Antioch
in Paul’s Letters and in Acts.

Not only does the
Ananias
involved in the conversion of Izates play a role in Acts 9:9–19’s picture of Paul’s encounter in Damascus on ‘
a street called the Straight
’ at the house of one ‘
Judas
’, but a similar
Ananias
plays a prominent role in Eusebius’ narrative of another conversion – that of ‘
King Agbarus
’ or ‘
King Abgarus
’ of the Osrhoeans (and characterized by him as ‘
the Great King of the Peoples beyond the Euphrates
’), a narrative Eusebius claimed to have found in ‘
the Royal Archives of Edessa
’ –
Antioch-by-Callirhoe
– and to have personally translated into the Greek from Syriac or Aramaic.

In these parallel conversion narratives, a namesake of the
Judas
at whose house Paul is supposed to have stayed in
D
a
mascus
also appears in the story Eusebius conserves. In this version,
Ananias
is the courier between Jesus and
King Agbarus
. In Josephus’ picture of Izates’ conversion (also a
King
-to-be at another such
Antioch
), he is associated with another unnamed teacher (Paul?). Together they get in among the women in Izates’ father ‘
Bazeus
’’ (
Agbarus
?) harem and
teach that circumc
i
sion is unnecessary for conversion
.
4

The
Judas
in the account Eusebius claims to have found in the Royal Archives at Edessa is
Judas Thomas
, that is, ‘
Judas the Twin
’ – in John, the patently redundant ‘
Didymus Thomas
’ or
Twin Twin
, both
Didymus
in Greek and
Thoma
in Aramaic meaning ‘
twin
’; in the Gospel of Thomas, ‘
Didymus Judas Thomas’
, most probably Jesus’ third brother
Judas
or ‘
Jude the brother of James
’ in the Letter by that name in the New Testament; and in the Koran, even ‘
Hudhud
’
a bird
!
5
In Eusebius’ discussion of these events this ‘
Judas
’ has something to do with a
disciple
named ‘
Thaddaeus
’ – in the Gospels, an ‘
Apostle
’ as well.
6

To bring this particular cluster of appellatives full circle, the latter is rather referred to in Matthew 10:3 as ‘
Lebbaeus
who was surnamed Thaddaeus
’. In Mark 3:18 this is simply ‘
Thaddaeus
’, but in Luke 6:16 and Acts 1:13 he is replaced by someone called ‘
Judas
(
the brother
)
of James
’ – again probably
the third brother of Jesus named
‘
Judas
’ or ‘
Jude’
.
7

Stephen and
the Hellenists

Notwithstanding this plethora of confusing overlaps, the Community Acts 11:26 appears to be describing as ‘
Christian
’ in its picture of early events at
Antioch
is certainly a
Hellenistic
or ‘
Greco-Judaic
’ one – if it can really be said to be ‘
Judaic
’ at all. Six lines earlier, Acts 11:20 refers to it or the Community preceding it as ‘
Hellenist
’. As just remarked, one must be careful of such denotations as they may represent a circumlocution or euphemism for something entirely different – sometimes, in fact, something just the opposite. This would be true, for example, in the
dispute
between ‘
Hellenists’
(
Hellenistai
) and ‘
Hebrews
’ in Acts 6:1–5 over ‘
the daily ministration for widows
’ (
diakonia
) and ‘
waiting on tables
’ (
diakonein
) which serves to introduce the highly-polemicized and largely fictional story about someone Acts ultimately ends up calling ‘
Stephen’
.
8

In this story, ‘
the
Hellenistai
’ (6:1) are probably not ‘
Hellenes
’ or ‘
Hellenists
’ at all nor are ‘
Hebrews
’ probably Hebrews. In it ‘
Hebrews
’ most likely refers to principal Apostles as
per
Paul’s use of the term in 2 Corinthians 11:22 to depict those he is contemptuously dismissing as ‘
Super Apostles
’ or ‘
Apostles of the Highest Degree’
. Nor is the ‘
dispute
’ between so-called ‘
Hellenists
’ and ‘
Hebrews
’, pictured in Acts 6:1–6’s run-up to its introduction of this ‘
Stephen
’, probably about ‘
serving tables
’ or ‘
ministering to widows
’, however picturesque or charming the circumstances of this episode appear to be.

Nor can it be said that ‘
Stephen
’ – probably not even an historical personage (at least not in the context and circumstances presented by Acts
9
) – is one of ‘
the Hebrews
’ as the episode impenetrable, implies. Neither in this presentation is he one of ‘
the Hellenists
’, though in the final analysis he probably is and, archetypically speaking at least, typifies what a ‘
Hellenist
’ might have been if one existed at this time – basically one of Paul’s newly-converted Gentile followers.

So do the other six members of ‘
the Seven
’ enumerated here in Acts 6:5, all with patently Grecian names – two seemingly right out of Plato (‘
Timon
’ and ‘
Parmenas
’). A third, the never-heard-of-before-or-since ‘
Nicolaus
,
a proselyte from Antioch
’ (thus!), probably reflects one of Josephus’ sources, the wily Herodian diplomat
cum
historian ‘
Nicolaus of Damascus’
.
10
No
t
withstanding, it should be observed that in the Damascus Document there are certainly a species of Gentile proselytes or co
n
verts delineated who are far more exacting, scrupulous, and demanding, Judaically-speaking, than any of these ‘
deaconizing Seven
’ in Acts.
11
In actuality, Stephen like
Ananias
and
Judas Thomas
above represents another of these
doppelganger
characters as well.